by Jo Nesbo
When the results came back Mathias was sitting at his desk and had to read them three times. And the same nasty and black and wonderful feeling surged to the surface again. The tests were negative. Both in the medical sense, Bekhterev’s disease could be eliminated as a cause of the afflictions, and in the more familiar sense, Herr Aasen could be eliminated as the girl’s father. And Mathias knew he didn’t know. But she knew; Laila Aasen knew. He had seen her face twitch when he asked for blood samples from all three of them. Was she still screwing the other man? What did he look like? Did he live in a detached house with a big front lawn? What secret flaws did he have? And how and when would the daughter find out that all her life she had been deceived by this lying whore?
Mathias looked down and realised he had knocked over his glass of water. A large wet stain was spreading across his crotch, and he felt the cold spread to his stomach and up towards his head.
He phoned Laila Aasen and informed her of the result. The medical result. She thanked him, audibly relieved, and they rang off. Mathias stared at the telephone for a long time. God, how he hated her. That night he lay unable to sleep on the narrow mattress in his bedsit where he had stayed after studying. He tried to read, but the letters danced in front of his eyes. He tried masturbating, which as a rule made him tired enough to sleep afterwards, but he couldn’t concentrate. He stuck a needle in the big toe that had gone completely white again, just to see if he had any sensation. In the end he huddled up under the duvet and cried until daybreak painted the night sky grey.
Mathias was also responsible for more general neurological cases and one of them was an officer from Bergen Police Station. After the examination, the middle-aged policeman stood up and dressed. The combination of body odour and boozy breath was numbing.
‘Well?’ growled the policeman as if Mathias were one of his subordinates.
‘First stages of neuropathy,’ Mathias replied. ‘The nerves under your feet are damaged. There is reduced sensation.’
‘Do you think that’s why I’ve started walking like a bloody dipso?’
‘Are you a dipso, Rafto?’
The policeman stopped buttoning up his shirt and a flush rose up his neck, like mercury up a thermometer. ‘What did you bloody say, you snot-nosed whelp?’
‘As a rule too much alcohol is the cause of polyneuropathy. If you continue to drink you risk permanent brain damage. Have you heard of Korsakoff, Rafto? You haven’t? Let’s hope you never do because if you hear his name it’s generally in connection with an extremely unpleasant syndrome named after him. When you look in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re a dipso, I don’t know what you answer, but I suggest that next time you ask an additional question: Do I want to die now or do I want some more time?’
Gert Rafto scrutinised the young man in the doctor’s coat. Then he swore under his breath, marched out and slammed the door behind him.
Four weeks later Rafto rang. He asked if Mathias could come and see him.
‘Drop in tomorrow,’ Mathias said.
‘I can’t. It’s urgent.’
‘Then get yourself to A&E.’
‘Listen to me, Lund-Helgesen. I’ve been in bed for three days without being able to move. You’re the only one who’s asked me straight out if I’m a dipso. Yes, I am a dipso. And no, I don’t want to die. Not yet.’
Gert Rafto’s flat stank of rubbish, empty beer bottles and him. But not of leftovers, for there was no food in the house.
‘This is a B1 vitamin supplement,’ Mathias said, holding the syringe to the light. ‘It will get you back on your feet.’
‘Thank you,’ Gert Rafto said. Five minutes later he was asleep.
Mathias walked around the flat. On the desk there was a photograph of Rafto with a dark-haired girl on his shoulders. Above the desk on the wall hung photographs of what must have been murder scenes. Many photographs. Mathias stared at them. Took a couple of them down and studied the details. Goodness, how sloppy they had been, the murderers. Their inefficiency was especially noticeable on the bodies with wounds from both sharp and blunt instruments. He opened drawers and looked for more photographs. He found reports, notes, a few valuables: rings, ladies’ watches, necklaces. And newspaper cuttings. He read them. Gert Rafto’s name ran right through them, often with quotes from press conferences at which he talked about the murderers’ stupidity and how he had caught them. Because it was clear he had caught them, every single one.
Six hours later, when Gert Rafto awoke, Mathias was still there. He was sitting by the bed with two murder reports in his lap.
‘Tell me,’ Mathias said. ‘How would you commit a murder if you didn’t want to get caught?’
‘Avoid my beat,’ Rafto said, looking round for something to drink. ‘If the detective’s good, you haven’t got a hope in hell anyway.’
‘And if I still wanted to do it on the beat of a good detective?’
‘Then I would cosy up to the detective before committing the murder,’ Gert Rafto said. ‘And then, after the murder, I would kill him, too.’
‘Funny,’ Mathias said. ‘That’s just what I was thinking.’
In the weeks that followed, Mathias made quite a few house calls to Gert Rafto. He recovered quickly and they talked often and at length about illness, lifestyle and death, and about the only two things Gert Rafto loved on this earth: his daughter Katrine who, incomprehensibly, returned his love, and the little cabin on Finnøy which was the one place he could be sure of finding peace. Mostly, though, they talked about the murder cases Gert Rafto had solved. About the triumphs. And Mathias encouraged him, told him the fight against alcohol could be won, he could celebrate new triumphs so long as he kept off the bottle.
And by the time late autumn came to Bergen with even shorter days and even longer showers Mathias had his plan ready.
One morning he called Laila Aasen at home.
He gave his name, and she listened in silence as he explained the reason for his call. The daughter’s blood sample had thrown up new findings and he now knew that Bastian Aasen was not the child’s biological father. It was important that he be given a blood sample by the real father. This would of necessity mean that the daughter and Bastian would be apprised of the relationship. Would she give her consent?
Mathias waited, allowing this to sink in.
Then he said that if she considered it important that the matter remained behind closed doors, he would still like to help, but it would have to be done ‘off the record’.
‘Off the record?’ she repeated with the apathy of someone in shock.
‘As a doctor I’m bound to observe ethical rules regarding candour to the patient, here, your daughter. But I’m researching syndromes and am therefore particularly interested in following up her case. If, with the utmost discretion, you could meet me this afternoon …’
‘Yes,’ she whispered in a tremulous voice. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Good. Catch the last cable car of the day to the top of Ulriken. There we will be undisturbed and can walk back down. I hope you appreciate what I’m risking, and please don’t mention this meeting to a living soul.’
‘Of course not! Trust me.’
He was still holding the receiver to his ear after she had rung off. With his lips to the grey plastic, he whispered: ‘And why should anyone trust you, you little whore?’
It was only when she was lying in the snow with a scalpel to her throat that Laila Aasen admitted she had told a friend she was going to meet him. Because in fact they had originally had a dinner date. But she’d only mentioned his Christian name and not why they were meeting.
‘Why did you say anything at all?’
‘To tease her,’ Laila howled. ‘She’s so nosy.’
He pressed the thin steel harder against her skin and Laila sobbed her friend’s name and address. After which she said no more.
When, two days later, Mathias was reading about the murder of Laila Aasen and the disappearances of Onny Hetland and Gert Rafto in th
e newspaper, he had mixed feelings. First of all, he was displeased with the murder of Laila Aasen. It had not gone as he had planned; he had lost control in a frenzy of fury and panic. Hence there had been too much mess, too much to clear up, too much that reminded him of the photographs in Rafto’s flat. And too little time to enjoy the revenge, the justice of it.
The murder of Onny Hetland had been even worse, nigh on a catastrophe. Twice his courage had failed him as he was about to ring her doorbell, and he had walked away. The third time he had realised he was too late. Someone was already there ringing the bell. Gert Rafto. After Rafto had left he had rung and introduced himself as Rafto’s assistant and had been let in. But Onny had said she wouldn’t tell him what she had told Rafto; she had given a promise that the matter would stay strictly between them. Only when he had made an incision in her hand with the scalpel did she talk.
Mathias gleaned from what she said that Gert Rafto had decided to solve the case under his own steam. He wanted to rebuild his reputation, the fool!
There had been nothing to criticise about the disposal of Onny Hetland, however. Very little noise, very little blood. And the carving up of her body in the shower had been efficient and quick. He had packed all the parts in plastic and placed them in the large rucksack and bag he had brought along for the purpose. On his visits to Rafto, Mathias had been told that one of the first things the police check in murder cases is cars observed in the vicinity and registered taxi rides. So he walked the whole way back to his flat.
All that remained now was the last part of Gert Rafto’s instructions for the perfect murder: kill the detective.
Strangely enough this was the best of the three murders. Strange because Mathias had no feelings for Rafto, none of the hatred that he had felt for Laila Aasen. It was more about him getting close, for the first time, to the aesthetics he had envisaged, to the idea he had of how the murder should be executed. His experience of the very act itself was above all as gruesome and heart-rending as he had hoped it would be. He could still hear Rafto’s screams echoing round the deserted island. And the strangest thing of all: on the way back he discovered that his toes were no longer white and numb; it was as if the gradual freezing process of his extremities had been halted for a moment, as if he had thawed.
Four years later, after Mathias had killed a further four women, and he could see that all the murders were an attempt to reconstruct the murder of his mother, he concluded that he was mad.
Or, to be more precise, that he was suffering from a serious personality disorder. All the specialist literature he had read certainly pointed to that. The ritual nature of the murders, their having to take place on the day the first snow of the year came, his having to build a snowman. And, not least, his growing sadism.
But this insight in no way prevented him from continuing. For time was short; Raynaud’s phenomenon was already appearing with increasing frequency, and he thought he could detect the first symptoms of scleroderma: a stiffness in the face that would eventually give him the revolting pointed nose and the pursed carp mouth with which the worst afflicted were ultimately burdened.
He had moved to Oslo to continue his work on immunology and water channels in the brain, as the research centre for this was the Anatomy Department in Gaustad. Alongside his research he was working at Marienlyst Clinic where Idar was employed and had recommended him. Mathias also did night shifts at A&E since he couldn’t sleep anyway.
It was not difficult to find victims. Initially it was the patients’ blood samples which in many cases ruled out paternity, and then there were the DNA tests by the Paternity Unit at the Insititute of Forensic Medicine. Idar, who had fairly limited competence, even for a general practitioner, covertly took advice on all cases concerning hereditary illness and syndromes. And, if the patients were young people, Mathias’s advice was invariably the same.
‘Get both parents to appear at the first consultation, take mouth swabs from everyone, say it’s just to check the bacterial flora and send the samples to the Paternity Unit so that we at least know we’re working from an accurate starting point.’
And Idar, the idiot, did as he was told. Which meant that Mathias soon had a little file on women with children who were sailing under a false flag, so to speak. And best of all was that there was no link between him and these women as the mouth swabs were submitted under Idar’s name.
The method for luring them into the trap was the same as the one applied with such success to Laila Aasen. A telephone call and an agreement to meet at a secret location unknown to anyone. Only once had it happened that the appointed victim broke down on the phone and went to her husband to tell all. And that had ended with the family splitting up, so she had received her just deserts anyway.
For a long time Mathias had pondered how he could dispose of the bodies with increased efficiency. At any rate, it was obvious that the method he had used with Onny Hetland was not viable long term. He had done it piecemeal with hydrochloric acid in the bath at home in his bedsit. It was a risky, laborious process, injurious to health, and it had taken almost three weeks. Great therefore was his pleasure when he chanced upon the solution. The body storage tanks at the Anatomy Department. It was as brilliant as it was simple. Just like the cutting loop.
He had read about it in an anatomy journal where a French anatomist recommended this veterinary device for use on bodies which had started to decompose, because the loop cut through soft, rotting tissue with the same precise efficiency as through bone, and because it could be used on several bodies at the same time without any danger of transmitting bacteria. He had realised straight away that with a loop to cut up the victims, transportation would be radically simplified. Consequently he contacted the manufacturer, flew to Rouen and had the tool demonstrated, in halting English, one misty morning inside a whitewashed cowshed in northern France. The loop consisted of a plain handle shaped like – and the approximate size of – a banana furnished with a metal shield to protect your hand against burns. The wire itself was as thin as fishing line and ran into both ends of the banana from which it could be tightened or slackened with a button. There was also an on-off switch which activated the battery-driven heating element and made the garrotte-like wire glow white in seconds. Mathias was elated; this tool would be useful for more than carving up bodies. When he heard the price he almost burst out laughing. The loop cost Mathias less than the flight. Batteries included.
The publication of the Swedish study concluding that somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent of all children had a different biological father from the one they thought reflected Mathias’s own experiences. He was not alone. And nor was he alone in having to die a cruel, premature death because of his mother’s whoring with tainted genes. But he would be alone in this: the act of cleansing, the fight against disease, the crusade. He doubted that anyone would thank or honour him. This he did know, however: they would all remember him, long after his death. For he had finally found what was to be his fame for all posterity, the masterpiece, the final flourish of his sword.
It was chance that set the ball rolling.
He saw him on TV. The policeman. Harry Hole. Hole was being interviewed because he had hunted down a serial killer in Australia. And Mathias was reminded of Gert Rafto’s advice: ‘Not on my beat.’ He also recalled, however, the satisfaction of having taken the life of the hunter. The feeling of supremacy. The feeling of power. Nothing later had quite compared with the murder of the police officer. And this Herostratically famous Hole appeared to have something of Rafto about him, some of the same offhandedness and anger.
Nonetheless, he might have forgotten all about Harry Hole had it not been for one of the gynaecologists at Marienlyst Clinic mentioning in the canteen the next day that he had heard this, to all outward appearances, solid detective off the TV was an alkie and a nutcase. Gabriella, a paediatrician, added that she had the son of Hole’s girlfriend as a patient. Oleg, a nice boy.
‘He’ll be an alkie then, as well,’
said the gynaecologist. ‘It’s in the bloody genes, you know.’
‘Hole’s not the father,’ Gabriella countered. ‘But what’s interesting is that the man who’s registered as the father, some professor or other in Moscow, is also an alcoholic.’
‘Hey, I didn’t hear that!’ shouted Idar Vetlesen over the laughter. ‘Don’t forget client confidentiality, folks!’
Lunch carried on, but Mathias was unable to forget what Gabriella had said. Or, rather, the way she had expressed herself: ‘the man who’s registered as the father’.
Accordingly, after lunch, Mathias followed the paediatrician to her office, went in behind her and closed the door.
‘May I ask you something, Gabriella?’
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, and a flush of anticipation spread up her cheeks. Mathias knew she liked him, he supposed she thought he was handsome, friendly, funny and a good listener. She had even, indirectly, asked him out on a couple of occasions, but he had declined.
‘As you may know I’m allowed to use some of the clinic’s blood samples for my research,’ he said. ‘And in fact I found something interesting in the sample of the boy you were talking about. The son of Hole’s girlfriend.’